Arts of War on the Web

Citrus College in Glendora, California, is now offering its entire Boots to Books curriculum, which is aimed at helping young, returning veteran college students, to any college or university for a moderate charge, which goes to help support the College’s veterans program and organization. For more information go to the Boots to Books website:

The Citrus College program is run by Bruce O. Solheim, an Army veteran and history professor who has taught the history of the war on the collegiate level for fourteen years. Solheim also serves as the College’s Volunteer Veterans Coordinator.

Peg Mullen, an unassuming Iowa farm wife and mother who became a passionate national antiwar activist following the death of her son Michael in 1970 in Vietnam, died Oct. 2. She was 92 years old.

Michael Mullen’s death from friendly fire and his mother’s reaction to it was the subject of the best-selling 1976 book, Friendly Fire, by C.D.B. Bryan, as well as a memorable 1979 TV movie in which Carol Burnett played Peg Mullen.

Here’s my review of Mrs. Mullen’s 1995 memoir, Unfriendly Fire, which appeared in the August-September 1995 VVA Veteran:

The term “friendly fire” has never been the same since the publication of C.D.B. Bryan’s 1976 book of the same name. That book–and the riveting 1979 TV movie starring Carol Burnett–told the painful story of the aftermath of the death of Michael Mullen, an Americal Division infantryman who was killed in his sleep in February 1970 by an errant American artillery round. The book and movie focused on Michael Mullen’s mother, Peg, of Waterloo, Iowa and her wrenching personal and political reactions to her son’s tragic death.

Peg Mullen tells her version of the story in Unfriendly Fire: A Mother’s Memoir (University of Iowa, 156 pp., $22.95, hardcover; $12.95, paper), a very moving, unique contribution to the literature of the Vietnam experience. This readable, short book opens a window on what Peg Mullen aptly calls “the forgotten people in the Vietnam War,” the families of those who were killed. The chapter titled “Your Son is Dead”–in which Peg Mullen recounts the events of February 21, 1970, when she and her husband were notified of their son’s death–is beautifully (and heartbreakingly) written.

“A Day in the Life of an American Soldier in Vietnam,” a photograph and artifact exhibit, went on display last week as part of the ongoing 20th Anniversary celebration of the Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University. The exhibit will be up until mid December at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Building on the Texas Tech University campus.

The exhibit illuminates the elements of a typical day in the life of a U.S. soldier during the Vietnam War thought some 25 black and white photographs and a selected number of artifacts. The exhibit is self guided, free, and open to the public, Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m until 5:00 p.m.

A top-quality multi-media (photos, audio and words) page on The New York Times’ nytimes.com called “Veterans’ Voices” came on line on October 1. Produced by Derrick Henry and Catrin Einhorn, it features the voices of men who served with Alpha Troop of the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam in 1969-70, talking about their experiences during and after the war.

Take a look at
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/10/01/20091001-vietnam-audio.html?hp

Last week the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund announced a national call for photographs of the more than 58,000 men and women whose names are on The Wall in Washington. The photos will be featured in a high-tech display in the proposed $85 million underground Education Center that is planned nearby.

In an event held at the Newseum in Washington, former Nebraska Sen. (and Vietnam veteran) Chuck Hagel and Peter Holt, the owner of the San Antonio Spurs (and a Vietnam veteran and the chair of the Campaign to Build the Education Center), joined VVMF head Jan Scruggs to kick off the endeavor, which has had a jump start with the thousands of photos that the the Fund has collected that appear on its “Virtual Wall” web site on the Internet.

“We’ve got 10,000 already,” Scruggs told The Washington Post. “By the time we get this built, we’ll have 80 to 85 percent of them. And then, within 10 days, we’ll have the rest.”

For info on how to submit a photo, go to the VVMF web page.

Tim O’Brien, the much-honored novelist whose work is strongly influenced by his Vietnam War service has an interesting essay called “Telling Tails” that deals with what he calls “the centrality of imagination in enduring fiction” in the current, 2009 fiction issue of The Atlantic.

He begins with the tail story, a lighthearted on centering on his two young children (Timmy and Tad), which may or may not be true,and probably isn’t. Then he goes on to discuss his subject.

“In general,” O’Brien says, fictional topics are “born out of writing workshops, in which I’ve noticed, almost always to my alarm, that classroom discussion seems to revolve almost exclusively around issues of verisimilitude. Declarations such as these abound: I didn’t believe in that character. I need to know more about that character’s background. I can’t see that character’s face. I don’t understand why that character would behave so insipidly (or violently, or whatever).

“These are legitimate questions. But for me, as a reader, the more dangerous problem with unsuccessful stories is usually much less complex: I am bored. And I would remain bored even if the story were packed with pages of detail aimed at establishing verisimilitude. I would believe in the story, perhaps, but I would still hate it. To provide background and physical description and all the rest is of course vital to fiction, but vital only insofar as such detail is in the service of a richly imagined story, rather than in the service of good botany or good philosophy or good geography.”

If you’re in the San Antonio, Texas, area, you can hear Tim O’Brien in person. He’ll be doing a reading on Monday, Sept. 21, at 10:00 a.m. at St. Philip’s College’s Watson Fine Arts Center in The President’s Lecture Series. O’Brien (that’s him above in Vietnam) will be reading from his critically and popularly acclaimed 1990 book of linked-short stories (featuring main character Tim O’Brien) The Things They Carried.

For additional information, call 210-486-2376, or go to http://www.alamo.edu/spc/main/pls.aspx

The The Most Dangerous Man in America, a new documentary co-directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, had its debut September 11 at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film, which opens in several theaters around the nation this week, tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg who made his mark in American history in 1971 when he leaked the Pentagon Papers.

The documentary, which Ellsberg narrates, also covers his life as a gung-ho Marine in the mid-sixties, and his conversion to Vietnam War skeptic–and then to antiwar activist–after he went over there and saw first hand what was happening in the field.

“The movie is an act of hero worship, but it inadvertently suggests that, without a necessary touch of grandiosity, Ellsberg might never have acted as bravely as he did,” The New Yorker film reviewer David Denby noted in his otherwise positive review.

David Edelstein, writing in New York magazine, had nothing but praise for the movie. The film, he said, “offers one revelatory interview after another mixed with reenactments (animated) that have fun with the caper-movie aspect and build real suspense. So many people risked their livelihoods to put the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers out there—although its most tangible result was the creation of Nixon’s plumbers unit.”

On May 17, 1968, during the height of the Vietnam War–and of the antiwar movement–nine people, including two priests and a former nun, broke into a suburban Baltimore draft board (in Catonsville, Maryland), and burned several hundred files with home-made napalm. The protesters, including their leader, Father Daniel Berrigan, were arrested and put on trial, an event that was a media sensation in which the defendants were dubbed “the Catonsville Nine.”

Daniel Berrigan went on to write “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine,” a play based on the bombastic trail’s goings on. It premiered in 1971 in Los Angeles. Since then, the play has had several incarnations. The latest is a now-touring production by the non-profit, politically oriented Actors’ Gang of Hollywood founded by, among others, the actor Tim Robbins.

The show features an ensemble cast going through their paces on a bare-bones, abstract courtroom set, behind which looms an American flag. “While one is humbled by the nine’s moral rigor, the play is more sermon than debate,” Charlotte Stoudt wrote in her recent L.A. Times review. “The real drama lies in the conversion stories each defendant recounts — experiences after which they could not continue their lives as before. Bigotry in the South, bombing in Africa, murder in Guatemala: The Berrigans may have been on trial, but it’s the American government that is indicted here.”

The next gig for the play will be on September 12 at the Reston, Virginia, Community Center, followed by will two performances, September 17 and 18,  at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park. It then heads for Australia’s Brisbane Festival for three performances, September 24-27.

Several events, under the rubric of  “the Catonsville Nine Engagement Project,” will take place in and around the U. of Maryland in conjunction with the play.  At 7:00 p.m. on Friday, September 18, for example, there will be a panel discussion at the Robert and Arlene Kogod Studio Theatre dealing with the university during the Vietnam War. Among other things, a student uprising shut down the school in 1970 following the incursion into Cambodia. The events are part of the U of M’s “Semester on Peace.”

Jeanne Giaimis at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, is in the early stages of writing a book about African-American women who served in the military or in civilian jobs in Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan from 1954-75. “There have been no books written about this group,” Giaimis told us, “and I would therefore as a historian like to share their stories as a part of American history.”

As “a member of the baby boom generation, I am aware that younger generations have very little knowledge of the Vietnam War,” said said. “I would like to do my part to see that this chapter in our history is not forgotten.”

If you fit the bill and would like to be a part of the book, contact Giaimis at 201-675-6465 (cell); 973-353-3557 (work); or by email: giaimis@andromeda.rutgers.edu

If you do, tell her you read about her work right here at VVA’s Arts of War on the Web page.

I had an email the other day from Laura Hammons, the founder of Daughters of Vietnam Veterans, a vibrant and talented group of daughters and sons of Vietnam veterans from all over the world. The group is made up of artists, musicians, playwrights, photographers, journalists and others from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Vietnam. They have an excellent web site, and are looking to expand their membership.

“Our mission,” Hammons says, “is to enable ’sisters’ to use this organization to network with other ’sisters and brothers’ with advocacy projects through artistic means.” Many of the advocacy projects are humanitarian and peace-making efforts throughout the world. Another of the group’s priorities is to bring awareness of secondary post-traumatic stress disorder.